Department of City & Regional Planning

This week, Professor of City & Regional Planning Daniel G. Chatman transitions from his role as chair of the Department of City & Regional Planning to become interim dean of the College of Environmental Design. He will lead CED for one year, between the retirement of outgoing William W. Wurster Dean Renee Y. Chow and incoming dean Nicholas de Monchaux, who begins his term in July 2027. Chatman’s priorities for the coming year include highlighting the research and creative work of faculty, fundraising in support of improving the student experience and enabling faculty research, and continuing to improve the operations of the college.

Professor of CIty & Regional Planning Daniel Chatman joins the Road Scholars podcast to talk about the findings in his paper “Does Transit-Oriented Gentrification Increase Driving?”, co-authored with Ruoying Xu, Janice Park, and Anne Spevack and published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research. Road Scholars is a transportation-focused interlude from the creators of the UCLA Housing Voice podcast.

Four alums will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award at CED’s 2026 Commencement ceremony on May 19 at the Greek Theatre. This year’s awardees are Alma Du Solier (MLA 1999), Rossana Hu, Hon. FAIA (BA Architecture 1990), Lyndon Neri, Hon. FAIA (BA Architecture 1987), and Greg W. Perloff (MCP 1976). 

UC Berkeley’s continued dominance as the #1 public architecture program in the U.S. is a validation of CED’s belief that excellence does not have to be exclusive, and that rigorous academic research, broadly shared, can empower communities to enact change.

“The Implications of Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH) Sales for Residential Mobility,” a paper published in the Journal of the American Planning Association authored by PhD Candidate Taesoo Song and Professor of City & Regional Planning Carolina Reid, finds that NOAH sales, often to professional investors, may contribute to housing precarity.

A new paper from PhD candidate in Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning Minho Kim, with Professor of City & Regional Planning Marta Gonzalez and Marc Castellnou of the Catalan Fire Service, details a novel computational approach that helps anticipate fire movement before it happens, with the aim of preventing catastrophic wildfires. The paper, “Modeling Potential Fire Spread Polygons and Networks for Suppression Strategies,” was published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

In this interview with This is CNY, alum Sally Librera talks about using her expertise in public infrastructure, urban spaces, and economic opportunity as former head of the New York City subways and now New York president of National Grid, which delivers energy to 4.2 millions businesses and residents.

The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Practice, with contributions by five CED authors, aims to provide innovative, “actionable steps to empower practitioners, students, and academics in creating vibrant and sustainable cities.”

The latest episode of the Berkeley Voices podcast spotlights CED alum Hayden Shelby (PhD in City & Regional Planning 2019), now an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati. She talks to podcast host Anne Brice about how learning Thai while a student at UC Berkeley helped her become an expert in Thailand’s cooperative housing program, Baan Mankong.

In a paper published recently in the Journal of the American Planning Association, Assistant Professor of City & Regional Planning Zachary Lamb and his co-authors assess the spatial characteristics of manufactured home parks in the Bay Area to find out if, counter-intuitively, they could be examples of “good urbanism.”